


Inked Scales

by thethrillof



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Secret of Kells (2009)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 18,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It <i>would</i> be rather hard to trust people that tore you from and destroyed everything you knew and loved...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty. This chapter was written about two years ago. I assure you, reader, that the following will not have nearly this many point of view shifts in a single chapter, if any. Also the original post had the Northmen's speech actually written out through Google Translate, which I realized was obnoxious and so fixed.

The Northman held Aidan's life's work in huge, graceless hands. It flipped through the pages slowly, deliberately, coldly analyzing the beautiful patterns and bright inks. Unfathomable speech spilled from its mouth.

**_("A golden book. Well done ... better than those from the island, perhaps.")_ **

**_("We're going to take it?")_** the one on the left growled. The growl was far different from the standard blood- or gold-lusting roars. It almost seemed to carry a tone of deference.

And Aidan realized that he was standing directly in front of the  _leader._

He flinched, then felt Brendan's grip tighten on his cloak. The two Vikings that flanked them drew closer.

He wanted to reassure his apprentice, whisper that everything would be alright, that they would escape, all would be fine…but he couldn't. He was too terrified to form the simplest words, so he simply held him closer, hoping to give even the smallest comfort.

 ** _(“Yes. And only this one.”)_**  The  _ruler_ of the monsters who had destroyed nearly everything he held dear turned to stare directly at him. He shrank back uselessly, holding Brendan tighter.

Aidan let out a frightened shout as he was abruptly picked up by his hood. He hung limply in the left Viking's grip, too stunned to struggle. It swung him in front of the massive chief for inspection.

It watched him impassively for a few moments. It glanced back at the Book, then nodded and rumbled out a few more words. Its tone made it clear what the words meant:  _"Take him."_

"No!" Brendan launched himself at the Viking's towering form, only to be snatched up easily by the one on the right.

Aidan could only watch in horror as Brendan was easily subdued, arms twisted nearly behind his back. The boy howled and kicked to no avail, and the Viking snarled and prepared to  _throw_ —

The massive leader raised a hand and let out a nightmarish  _laugh._   ** _("The child has some fighting spirit. Take him too.")_**

Aidan was dropped onto his feet and nearly overbalanced. Brendan was dumped beside him.

The leader rumbled,  ** _("It's almost time ... Tie them together, we do not want them too damaged.")_** Aidan watched helplessly as it shoved the Book into its cloak.

The one beside Brendan pulled a rope from a hidden pouch and yanked the boy's arm out. The one on Aidan's side did the same to him, ignoring his cringe. More deftly than seemed possible with such massive hands, it tied the rope around their wrists, easily ignoring Brendan's wild struggles.

**_(“We go. The rest will be here soon enough.”)_ **

The Viking leader turned towards Kells and let out a thunderous cry. It seemed to nod to itself and began to lumber away from the ruined village. With a thrill of horror, Aidan realized that the Viking was calling the others back.

Heedless of the two monks' terror, the Viking on the left held the end of the rope and pulled. Brendan instinctively dug his feet into the snow to stop, Aidan following his lead. The Viking merely snarled and jerked the rope forward, nearly pulling the two monks over, not bothering to pause. The message was clear: if they wouldn't walk on their own, they'd be dragged. And the Viking was strong enough to do so effortlessly.

The Vikings did not waste time and despite their massive size, they moved quickly. Aidan and Brendan had to strain their legs to keep up.

The rope was short enough that Aidan could see dozens of deliberately carved notches on its right horn, even with his failing eyesight. He tried to shift away, but the notch-horned Viking only pulled him closer. He shuddered when his arm brushed against its fur cloak, and didn't dare try to move away again.

**-/-/-/-/-**

At least a dozen of Aisling's wolves were dead.

The rest were running wounded, including her. A long gash ran from her right side down her back leg, and with every footfall, she lost more blood.

 ** _("Left. Catch it.")_**  One of her pursuers stepped out of the darkness in front of her, angling its sword at her throat.

The Viking swung just a fraction of an inch too far to the right and missed. She whirled to the left to run—a tangle of bushes that she could vanish off to was only a few feet away—

(She  _almost_  escaped.)

—but then a Viking burst from the underbrush and swung its heavy axe. In a way, she was lucky; the blunt edge struck the side of her skull.

Her head rang. A mad pattern of red and white stars exploded in front of her eyes, and she was engulfed by black.

**-/-/-/-/-**

Brendan's breath hitched as Aidan stumbled for the third time in an hour.

Every time, Brendan expected the Viking that held the rope to turn and shove its sword through his mentor's throat. It never looked back, though the increasingly harsh tugs on the rope made is clear that it was getting more and more irritated.

Aidan spoke for the first time since they'd been taken. "I'm sorry, Brendan...I just—I don't know if I can keep up for much l-longer..." His voice lacked inflection, and his eyes were glazed over.

"Of course you can!" Brendan hissed back, frightened.  _Did he hit his head?_  he wondered, remembering the Viking tossing his mentor aside like a broken quill.

Brendan lowered his voice. "Look, we can wait until there's somewhere else to run—I can get these ropes loose—" (he didn't know that, but he wouldn't give up hope) "—and then we can run."

Aidan didn't seem to hear.

Snow was no longer falling from the sky, but the wind increased as the trees thinned. The freezing powder slapped into the procession. The Vikings shrugged it off easily in their thick fur cloaks, but Brendan felt the sting of every flake on his exposed feet, face, and hands.

Pangur was hidden in his hood, so he at least had a small source of heat on the small of his back. It was troubling, being unable to pull it up and block the cold, but he wouldn't let her suffer through the cold by her tiny self.

He didn't know if Aidan was feeling anything at all; he was visibly shivering, and his feet were nearing the color of his robes, but he wasn't favoring the leg that kept causing the stumbling. His eyes were pointed to the ground, and he was unresponsive to everything. Even the many (Brendan counted to nearly thirty until their matching cloaks threw him off) Northmen that were catching up didn't cause a reaction.

The sound of the massive beings stepping through the snow in perfect sync, of the howling wind, of the crows screaming above their heads drowned out his voice when he tried to speak to Aidan again.

The Viking at the head of the crowd had no such problems.  ** _("The materials will be half and half.")_** It turned to their captor and growled  ** _("Though not slaves. They will remain on the ship with less of us.")_**

Both monks stumbled as the trees broke away completely. The Viking yanked the rope hard, but Brendan's attention was pulled away when he caught sight of their destination.

Was it the river that he and Aisling had crossed so many times before? It didn't seem possible. It was hugely wide, wide enough for the pair of ships resting on the water. The Vikings' ships. They were dead black, from the bodies to the oars to the sails. The prows had the heads of bizarre dragons carved from the wood, and the water shook them gently, giving them an illusion of being alive.

There were a few Vikings already in the dragon-ships. They called out to the ones on the shore and shifted the boats closer to the makeshift dock, made of fallen trees.

The Viking that had ordered their capture stepped on first.

 ** _("We caught a wolf with unusual coat,")_**  one of the steering Vikings told it in rumbling tones. The lead Viking merely nodded, motioning to the one that held the rope, then to the ship opposite.

Before Brendan could react, the Viking that had kept to their right lifted two monks with hardly an effort, easily stepping onto the right ship.

Still holding them high by the necks of their robes, it called over,  ** _("Where will we put them?")_**

The leader rumbled dismissively,  ** _"(They are supplies, where do you think they go?")_** and turned away, apparently absorbed in what the crewmembers were speaking of—but not before Brendan noticed something. Gleaming off-center of its chest was...

He'd seen it so many times, he didn't understand why he hadn't realized what it was before. His uncle's symbol of authority in Kells: his lunula.

Every emotion, every memory, every thought about Kells that he'd been holding back rushed to the forefront of his mind.

His eyes misted over as he thought of his uncle's body lying prone in the snow. How had he fallen? He was the Abbot. He was  _Uncle_. He'd saved Brendan from the Vikings when he was less than a year old, killing three of the monsters in the process—though he wasn't supposed to know that, the Brothers talked...He couldn't have died. He couldn't.

And the Brothers... the fire...were the people in the church alright? The doors were strong—but the gates were much stronger—there was nothing in the church. Nothing but the wooden cross and the people. There was no reason—

' _The Northmen left no one on Iona, they will leave no one in Kells!'_

He was suddenly shoved to the planking, Aidan dragged down as well. The Vikings began to drop supplies around them, forcing the two monks to shrink back keep from being struck.  _They're making a wall,_  Brendan thought semi-hysterically.

And they  _were_  making a wall, though he didn't quite know why.  _Maybe so we don't know which way is home...even though there's no home left._

Everything plundered from Kells barricaded them in until he couldn't see any of the Vikings, or the trees, or the snow blowing in the wind. A robe caught in the wind and blew over them, concealing the sky.

_...Uncle...Brother Leonardo...Brother Square...everyone..._

Everything he had ever known had been torn away like a loose piece of paper.

_Everyone is dead._

Brendan buried his face in his arms and cried.

**-/-/-/-/-**

Aidan had seen Iona's destruction, yes, but he didn't  _remember_  it.

In Kells, he had no time to think of that horrific night—he had the Book, and Brendan, and even the Wall (though he knew in his heart that it wouldn't hold the Vikings back, he still desperately hoped that Cellach was right) to worry about. Even his nightmares were vague—burning buildings, running, screaming. Nothing specific.

But the Northmen had found them and had shattered the walls, and Aidan had led Brendan and the Book right to them _._

_(He was in Iona, watching the church go up in flames with his Brothers still alive inside, screaming in agony as they burned. He saw those that ran before him fall with axes in their skulls and arrows through their chests.)_

Brendan was going to die or worse due to his folly, and the only memory of Iona and his Brothers he let be torn from his hands.

_(Woman and children took sanctuary in Iona—not as many as in Kells, but they were there. He saw the Vikings cut them down as well, throwing some of the weaker back into the burning buildings without care.)_

There was no way out.

_(A few of the strongest monks and woman and older children were herded onto their ships, though the number of taken was nothing compared to the number of bodies that littered the ground.)_

_no stop it stop it stop it stop it please_

Brendan had been wrong—Aidan knew that he was surrounded by Northmen. He could feel the melting snow on his feet—

_(He was running to the docks, but he had to race through blood to get there—his sandals were covered with gore by the time he stepped into the docks—)_

Reality and memory were too much alike; one sparked off another horrible sensation or realization about the other.

_(He saw one slide out a knife after throwing a trio of screaming children into the burning kitchens and carve tiny notches into its horn. This horror was a contest to them, nothing but a game—)_

Aidan wasn't a coward, but he was terrified beyond rationality; everything was falling out of focus and he couldn't get it back—

**-/-/-/-/-**

They weren't given much food—a shred of bread here, a bit of fish there, carelessly shoved into the tiny space. Brendan had to scramble to catch whatever it was so it didn't hit the filthy-smelling deck.

Usually it was barely enough for one person, let alone two and a cat. Pangur would wriggle through the small spaces between the supplies in deepest night, bringing scraps back to share.

Aidan did little. Nothing outside of his head registered; not cold, not hunger, not Pangur, not Brendan, nothing.

Brendan did his best to take care of his broken mentor, keeping his thoughts on that and nothing else. He made sure to keep their cloaks over each other and kept close to him so neither would freeze.

Sometimes Aidan sank far enough into the haze that Brendan had to force the food and water down his throat. Those were some of the worst moments, but he wouldn't let himself fall apart. Because Aidan—Aidan had endured so much before. He just needed a little time to readjust, that was all.

Brendan shivered and curled up just a little closer to his empty eyed-mentor. "You'll wake up someday," he whispered earnestly. "I know it."

_...I know it._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _I'm going to write this, dammit._   
> 

Her skull throbbed in time with her burning side, but that didn’t matter. That pain was somewhere else, far from where she could muster up the strength to care.

There was something vanishing from her, spilling away into the dark.

Not blood, but something else. Something. Something she could not reach something infinitely more important than she could grasp in the quiet blackness, and before long—or perhaps in ages; she couldn’t tell time in the rolling void—it had drained away.

The darkness rocked her like the sway of branches in the wind.

Aisling slept and slept until the mists that were not from the Forest filled her lungs completely, and she choked on it like the creeping darkness of Crom Cruach that had weakened her so much in the first place.

She was torn from the black to a lurching haze of white and grey, and the pain ripped through her—and the Forest, she’d been cut off from it from everything she’s ever known _it’s gone it’s gone it’s gone_ —and she knew, finally, what she’d lost.

A howl exploded from her throat, suffused with grief she hadn’t felt since her people had fallen.

Great hands tried to hold her down. She was terrified and alone but for the invaders-killers-plunderers and in agony, but they were still not strong enough to keep her from throwing herself from them, snapping their arms and ropes and

_f a l l i n g_

into the icy embrace of the sea.

She flailed and pushed her head above the water, ignored the pain and how the cold sank into her fur to swim until she could not see them through the fog. And for the first time since Crom Cruach’s defeat, she changed.

Pure white fur shifted to flashing white-silver scales, and the salmon bolted away from the bellows of the Northmen.

Her speed was only temporary. There was something in their metal, perhaps, or something on the sword that cut her that tainted it. The pain in her side made and kept itself known long after she knew it should have gone.

Maybe.

She really didn’t know how long she’d slept, whether it was weeks or months. It certainly felt raw enough for a day or so, but it couldn’t have been. The air was too unfamiliar for only days of travel.

Maybe.

She didn’t know how fast the Northmen’s ships were. All she knew of them was their weapons, the sounds they made thundering through her forest, and the smell of smoke and fear from their fleeing victims.

Maybe it was only a few days away. Maybe she could swim back before it was too unbearable.

Maybe Ireland was just beyond the horizon.

_Maybe._

She hated _maybe_ (unless it was _maybe there’ll be a rainstorm and the forest will like it_ , or _maybe Brendan will come out today and we can share new secrets_ ).

And later, Aisling decided she hated the mist, too. She never thought that would happen. Wherever she’d ended up had no end to it, and it just wouldn’t leave when she told it to. She couldn’t really even tell which way she was going, deep in her bones, and that was another horrible new thing.

The sky was stained grey in the day, nights stained it darker grey. The water reflected the color with the occasional chunks of ice that shattered under the smallest weight.

The sea sometimes shook with creatures that dove and rose, vanishing too quickly for her get a good look at them-not that she usually tried. They didn’t seem to hear her, and were huge enough eat her wolf or doe forms in one bite, let alone a fish. Diving deeper worked, but she never sank too far as to never find her way up again.

So she swam on.

And the flat expanse of grey went on.

And home felt as out of reach as the sky.

**-/-/-/-/-**

There wasn’t a single trace of land as far as she could see (which, admittedly, wasn’t much), so she doesn’t know where it could have come from. _It_ being half of a large tree, drifting along on the surface, fish clustered in the shadow of its branches like strange silvery fruit.

It still happened to be something _not water_ , and so it was something worth celebrating and darting up to as quickly as possible.

Scales shifted to skin and she landed hands-feet on the trunk.

The wood was soaked with enough seawater to make soft squishing sounds and to feel spongy. The little bark that had managed to cling to it sloughed off at her gentlest touch. It smelled solely of brine. Nothing about it felt the least familiar.

She should have expected that. Her heart still fell when the realization settled, and she decided to pretend.

Of course it felt like home. Like—moss. Moss on a branch that was swaying in the breeze— _no!_

Aisling wrapped herself in her hair and curled up on the too-soft trunk, shivering. That made her think of the dark and the draining and she never ever wanted to again.

She tried to grow some snowdrops on the branches that stuck further out into the air, almost dry.

They didn’t take, left a trail of withered white petals floating alongside her in the water.

(That dark-grey night, she lay on the side that didn’t hurt and cried.)

**-/-/-/-/-**

The tree drifted, and she drifted with it. There was no reason to, and no reason not to.

Shifting memories and thoughts came and went like dreams. Aisling thought of the smell of trees and dirt going on forever, of feeling steady ground beneath her feet and paws and hooves, of Brendan and of his darkness-into-light Book. She know she’d probably never see it.

Aisling traced patterns on the wood with her nails, wolves with crooked eyes and vines with leaves that were too round.

Perhaps, she pondered, the Northmen had been lost themselves, and they sailed their ships with her over the edge of the earth. The fog was what splashed up when the sea spilled over in a great waterfall. The only way out was up. That's where the winged creatures came from, because they could fly home. Diving deep meant finding where everything went to collect until it rotted away.

No; the earth didn’t end, and neither did the sea. It went around into itself, like the seasons. Like life.

Rivers always went somewhere.

And she would find a way out, even if it took forever. The ocean current might yet find her a way home.

**-/-/-/-/-**

Or maybe it would just find a child of the Forest and not of the sea _out_.

For a split second she thought she saw stars—lightning flashed and drowned them out. The waves hurled her into the air every time she tried to dive below the water. She clung desperately to the driftwood, wind blasting her hair when the rain and roiling seawater wasn't pelting it.

She thought she screamed. The storm—it had to be a storm, even though Ireland had nothing so massive—was too loud for her to hear.

It went on for half of a light-grey time before she saw something bright red in the sky, and then rock, and then she and her tree hit the island with force enough to rip it to shreds.

She tried to run, staggered at the almost-stillness beneath her feet and fell. Her leg still ached, but that didn't stop her from crawling up the rocky slope and falling into the first cave she found.

Her eyes slid closed, and she lay  on her back to listen to the thunder of her heartbeat.

Just for a moment, she thought.

When she opened them again, the storm had eased, everything was dark grey, and two pairs of scale-rimmed yellow eyes peered back. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick fyi: this is post Gift of the Night Fury, which you can catch on youtube.

  
  
Nothing was better than flying, though his father's exhausted face lighting up when he offered to scout after the first Devastating Winter storm was an excellent bonus.  
  
Berk had help with the dragons in melting the snow, mostly. They weren't following directions by their riders--and by extension, Stoick's directions to their riders--as well they usually did.  
  
Hiccup didn't blame them. He counted an average of three young dragons to every pair of parents, and most unpaired still helped the others out; taking care of the little ones, clearly, was top priority. They could fly over snow to get their babies food, and their babies could learn to at least glide from house to house. Making pathways and freeing doors blocked by snowdrifts weren't nearly as important in the dragons' eyes.  
  
So that left him and Toothless as some of the very few willing to check out any new ice floes, fish hotspots, or both. Stoick and Gobber at least enjoyed taking time ice fishing.  
  
And if the first rider-dragon pair decided to try some aerial tricks along the way, nobody was around to see.  
  
"Let's try barrel rolls for a start!" Hiccup called.  
  
Toothless spread his wings and whirled, making a sound that Hiccup identified as a laugh at the speedy reversal of sky and sea. He grinned hard and held on for all he was worth as he did it once, twice, three times.  
  
Barrel rolls and loops, daring acceleration, dives and skimming along the crests of waves; wonderful things to experience.  
  
Sky and sea went on forever, the former mostly clear with just the slightest of clouds along the horizion, the latter rolling with waves just big enough to be exciting.  
  
It felt like only minutes, but the sun rose higher and they had to break off and really scout.  
  
Northwest had a big chunk of ice. West had a scattering of fish, but not much to report home about.  
  
Southwest--there was something floating in the water. They glided down to see.  
  
A prowhead. A black dragon, the neck jagged splinters. Nothing that Hiccup recognized, and Toothless didn't seem to either.  
  
South, they saw a small island, one of quite a few around Berk that was just rock and a handful of trees. Nothing remarkable--but there was a black mass on the edge of the beach.  
  
"Let's scout that out, bud," Hiccup said.  
  
Toothless whuffed in agreement and dove. They landed with a thud-crunch of smaller stones cracking under the dragon's weight next to the mass--a ship. Or the piece of one, anyway.  
  
The back half was gone. An orange robe was all that was left of whatever cargo it held, caught in the splinters and bobbing on the current like some ghostly fish.  
  
There was someone beside it. Hiccup rushed up to them, only to double back around at the sight of a helmet govered in gore, bloody brains swimming in the upturned bowl it made.  
  
Once he forced his lunch back down, he started talking to distract himself. "The ship crashed against the rocks during the storm. Who would've been crazy enough to go out in that?" His normal answer would be, of course, 'vikings'. But the ones in Berk wouldn't have risked their ships in that kind of storm, even if they weren't their main source of transportation anymore. And that ship was definitely not from Berk.  
  
Toothless growled and twitched his ear-fins towards the stand of trees. _Something's there._  
  
"What is it, Toothless?" His voice fell to a whisper.  
  
The Night Fury dropped into a crouch and crept forward. _Look._  
  
Hiccup saw something he hadn't noticed before: a small spattering of scarlet going up the stones of the beach.  
  
"Survivors," he said, a little louder.  
  
The blood trail wasn't far, but the island was small enough that it didn't matter. A few footprints, one dragging, appeared in the dirt around the roots.  
  
Hiccup was concentrating so hard on the trail that he nearly stumbled over the source of it.  
  
An old man had his arms wrapped around a boy. Both of their faces were blanched, their lips two dark slashes in their faces, and the boy had a horizontal cut under his left eye. A cat glared out from between them.  
  
Toothless sniffed at them gingerly. They were filthy and bruised, like they'd fallen multiple times. Their clothes were in awful shape as well, ripped around the seams.  
  
If they had been like the body left on the beach, Hiccup might've waited for help. Enemy tribes didn't attack Berk often, but it was a rule that unknown ships and the people were to be suspicious of. But these two shivering, tiny figures--thin as Hiccup and the boy looked even shorter--he instinctively knew they weren't a threat.  
  
Not just instinctively. He knew the feeling of shivering all alone in the middle of winter. He'd gone hunting for dragons when he was younger, and more than once he'd stranded himself in the middle of the trees. His father and Gobber were the only ones who ever managed to find him.  
  
He forcefully shook himself as the boy whimpered in his unconsciousness. They couldn't wait much longer before freezing, and Toothless wouldn't have let him near them if they had daggers hidden in their sleeves.  
  
Hiccup reached for them, pulling his arm back when the cat lashed a clawed paw out. "Easy, easy," he said soothingly, lifting his arms up. "I'm not gonna hurt them, alright? I'm here to help. Just checking..." He carefully reached to them again. The cat tensed but didn't attack.  
  
They both had pulses, and they were still healthy enough to shiver. That was good. Hiccup didn't have anything that could be used as a blanket, but...  
  
"They look pretty light. Think you could carry them?"  
  
Toothless looked at them closely, ignoring the low hiss from the cat, and let out a low grunt of agreement. They really were small.  
  
It was still a bit easier said than done. They were both barely unconscious, shifting when Hiccup tried to lift them, and the old man was still tall enough to nearly overbalance him. The cat nearly ripped his arms to shreds until Toothless let out a low hissing sound himself and spat a small flame at her feet.  
  
Eventually, though, he had them secure with some rope. They lolled against his back, but were light enough he could ignore them with a little difficulty. The cat stationed herself inside one of the bag attachments that particular model of saddle included, and they were off.  
  
There was only one bad moment when the boy awoke and tried to move, but all he did was stare wildly at the sea far below them, look up at Hiccup, and pass out again.  
  
In Berk, Stoick didn't seem nearly as upset at the strangers as Hiccup expected.  
  
"Thralls, I'm betting," was all he said. Hiccup hadn't heard the word before, but there was no time to ask. It was all he could do to grab some blankets and wrap them inside, leaving them in front of the fire.  
  
There wasn't much risk of their causing trouble if they were as weak as they looked, and even the strongest Viking would have trouble after being out in cold in clothes like that.  
  
He was dragged off to the Hall to report the ship he'd seen, calling to Toothless to watch them over his shoulder just in case.  
  
**/-/-/-/**  
  
They weren't on a ship anymore. They were on land, thank God. Even if the raiders had taken them to be killed in their lands, Brendan would fall with the steady ground beneath his feet first.  
  
Everything was still, and he realized he was warm.  
  
He nearly cried at the feeling. He'd almost forgotten what it was like.  
  
Slowly easing his eyes open, he realized that Aidan lay beside him, covered in the same furs as he was. Pangur Ban was resting near the hearth, but leapt from it and nuzzled him when she realized he was awake. Her purrs were nearly as welcoming as the heat.  
  
He pushed himself up to look around, unwilling to leave the warmth just yet.  
  
Wooden floors, walls decorated with sheilds and axes and swords. It matched the Northmen, although he didn't remember them carrying sheilds. And wrapping them in blankets seemed strange.  
  
He looked up and felt his chest go cold.  
  
No. They weren't with the raiders, at least not the same ones.  
  
Brendan remembered.  
  
He remembered the storm. The crash. The crawling desperately away from the roaring ocean, waiting to swallow them up as they did the other raiders.  
  
He remembered _flying_.  
  
The black dragon in the rafters stared back down at him with ink-green eyes.  
  
He lay back down, tugging the furs above his and Aidan's heads, hoping it hadn't seen them, or at least wouldn't eat them.  
  
_Thump._  
  
He felt the floor shake with its landing. It was standing right next to them.  
  
Then, a high pitched growl--from Pangur.  
  
The dragon growled back, but amazingly, it didn't sound aggressive. Brendan peeked out.  
  
Pangur stood between it and them, fur puffed out. The dragon looked...amused? It was _smiling_ , and he realized it didn't have any teeth to eat them with.  
  
It huffed, and Pangur's fur stopped bristling. They seemed to talk for a few minutes. She turned and went back to her hearth.  
  
Brendan watched it.  
  
It watched him back, still looking bizarrely amused. Eventually it became bored of just staring and actually walked up to him.  
  
Brendan's eyes flew shut, but all it did was sniff at him, and at the lump that was Aidan.  
  
Aidan! Brendan scooted over to check him.  
  
Still asleep, shivering a little. He dared to pull his arms out from beneath the blankets to tuck them around his mentor. Then he scooted further under the blanket himself.  
  
He turned to look at the dragon again. Just because it couldn't eat them--just because Pangur wasn't on alert didn't mean it was completely safe.  
  
But slowly, the heat overtook him again, and his eyes drifted shut.  
  
His dreams were filled with flying, and a warm figure holding him upright.


	4. Chapter 4

They didn't follow the tiny white-grey human fleeing through the caves.

They saw it sometimes. It changed into things with four legs, but they knew that it was the same creature. Probably. At least Spark-head thought that and told Gas-head not to hunt it. Humans weren’t worth that much trouble, even one on its own.

It found its way outside. They followed it then, but pretended both heads were preoccupied with something in the rocks.

It looked over the sea with narrow green eyes, at the rocks that jutted out of the mists, and shook its head as if it had water in its ears. Then it spotted them, froze, and fled.

After a few days they found it again, perched on a ledge near the outside. They decided to watch it from above. After the Great One fell, fish had returned to the waters around the island, so they never needed to fly far to find things to eat. They were too old to find mates and raise offspring that season. So they really had nothing better to do.

It never went deep into the caves, and whenever it was within the dark it stared deeper inside and shivered, even though it was perfectly warm. 

Perhaps it could hear the few other dragons that stayed within the mist.

/-/-/-/

No, there was no sign of any other ships. No, the one body he found was quite clearly dead. No, he hadn't seen any signs of weapons, but the ship was so destroyed he couldn’t really know.

Hiccup described the ship at least twenty times, and swore there were no other survivors even more. 

The dragons were still in no mood to go flying, and the slight clouds on the horizon when they were flying weren't so slight—or far—anymore. Another storm was coming. Any scouting of the broken ship would have to wait.

"We'll ask the strays when they're awake," Stoick finally decided. The sunlight was nearly gone by then. Meeting adjourned. His father stayed behind to discuss things with Gobber and a few others.

He nearly collapsed a few times on the way back home, forgetting Toothless wasn't there to support him when his leg slid over the ice.

He made it back a while after darkness fell. He would've been there earlier if he hadn't thought to grab some fish for himself and Toothless. The winds started whipping, creating wild snakes made of snowflakes to rush past his legs. He was relieved to get inside, where the fire was still high thanks to his favorite fire starter.

The two were still asleep, although the blankets had moved--clearly one of them had woken up. "Any problems, bud?"

Toothless twitched his earfins in an easy no from next to where the boy was sleeping. The cat had decided to fit herself between the man and boy again. 

Hiccup crouched beside them, taking in their curled-up forms.

The old man's eyes opened.

They were the strangest shade he'd ever seen, a blue deep enough to seem purple. That wasn't what alarmed him. The look in those eyes was horrific. Terrified and somehow blank at the same time, Hiccup was hit with the look that made him think disturbingly of a downed dragon.

Then they closed again, so quickly that he thought that it hadn't been real--but the hands that were clutching the edge of the blanket and shaking told otherwise.

"Hey. Hey, it's alright," he started awkwardly. "You're fine. The storm is over, and this house is pretty strong..."

The boy shifted sleepily, then opened his eyes as well. Then they widened as they saw Hiccup, and he said...something. In a language he didn't understand.

"What?"

Incomprehension.

Crap. 

"Do you understand me?"

The boy didn't respond, eyes still fixed upon Hiccup--or rather, on his helmet.

"You don't, do you." He felt a sinking feeling in his gut. He carefully grabbed his helmet, flopping onto his dad's chair (he probably wouldn't be home for a while) and set it down. 

Vikings were scary. Hiccup knew that. They were stubborn, dangerous, and flat-out crazy. They destroyed other lands--though Berk hadn't raided anywhere in Hiccup's memory, they had neighboring tribes they made peace with who did. And evidently the two he happened to pick up were terrified of Vikings. Even one as tiny as Hiccup, going by how the old man's eyes still clenched shut and body shook along with the boy's frightened face.

...Dad was not going to be happy about this.

Hiccup sighed. That was enough to make them both flinch and slide deeper under the blankets. Great. 

He felt an odd affection for the two. Odd, because it took him time to usually think of people as people before dragons as people, even with the practice he'd gotten since he changed from Hiccup the Useless to Hiccup the Hero and people actually wanted to hang around with him.

Maybe they reminded him of dragons. Small, seemingly docile ones that didn't have teeth or flames or any way to defend themselves, really. 

...Maybe not like dragons, then.

Anyway. "Anyone up for some fish?" 

Toothless stood eagerly. Hiccup causally pulled a few cod from the basket and shoved the rest to Toothless.

He speared the fish and put them over the fire, noticing how both of his...guests fixed their gazes upon it like they'd never seen anything like it in their lives. They were so sticklike he half wondered if that were true.

They didn't have knives to slice them up, but that didn't seem to matter; Hiccup handed them over and they devoured them hastily, as if they didn't know if they'd have a meal again. Though they did pause to give a few bits to the cat.

After the meal, they seemed to want to keep wary, but they still weren't strong enough, especially with full bellies. 

For a while there was no sound but the crackling of the hearth flames and the occasional crunch of bones from Toothless. 

The door slammed open, letting a swirling mix of wind and snow inside along with the massive figure of Stoick. “Another storm from Hel, that is,” he muttered.

“Hey, dad,” Hiccup said, scrambling from the seat. 

“Hiccup,” he said, nodding. Then his gaze focused at the pair on the floor, who had shrunk back beneath the blankets again. "Did you learn anything?"

"No. They, uh...don't seem to be from around here. At all." Blank stare. "They don't speak our language."

A grunt. "That might not be a problem." 

True. While Berk had been too busy with dragons to trade often, they did manage it and had to pick up languages along the way. 

Stoick stepped toward the pair, pausing when they boy struggled to his feet. He stepped in front of the old man, trying to block him with his smaller body. 

_("Stay away from him!")_

Hiccup saw something unexpected in his father’s eyes at the shout: approval. Other than that, he merely peered over the boy’s head and said something. It sounded a bit like the boy’s words. 

The old man lifted his head up, but said nothing back.

“He understands me,” Stoick said slowly, “but honestly, I barely speak Scottish Gaelic myself. Gothi knows more. And that look in his eyes. I know that look.”

“…What’s wrong with him?” Hiccup asked.

“He’s sick in the mind. I’ve seen that look on men who’ve lost their families to dragons.” Pause. Toothless gave a guilty look, but the chief wasn’t looking at him. “They rarely survived the next attack.”

As if in understanding, the small boy’s legs gave out. But no, he was just too weak to stay on his feet. 

"That's something else Gothi might help with her herbs." Stoick looked towards the door, creaking audibly from the force of the ever-strengthening winds. "Tomorrow." 

"Tomorrow," Hiccup agreed.

"They'll stay in your room."

"They'll--what?"

/-/-/-/

Aidan held Brendan tightly (because he failed and they died and Brendan couldn't die no not today no never).

They burned inside his head (and burned and burned and the smell) and there was a candle in the room with them, in the Viking-boy's hand. 

They'd been scooped up like nothing (ropes and snow and blood slipping under his shoes) and carried by the Viking (they kill run hope we're fast enough we were not fast enough I was not fast enough) inside their furs up the stairs, set in the corner and left alone. The black dragon (the air is filled with black crows screaming and pecking at corpses) climbed after and settled opposite side of the bed.

(we're going to die here waiting like cattle for slaughter)

He was breathing hard again. 

Pangur pressed herself against his neck (the smoke made it so hard to breathe) and Brendan snuggled inside his arms and murmured something he couldn't hear. (he couldn't hear anything but flames.)

Wind howled outside, shaking the house on its foundations.

(the smoke burned his eyes.)

The Viking-boy step-scrape walked to them and Aidan closed his eyes, waiting for a knife to plunge into his back.

Gently, another blanket settled over their bodies, tucked around their shoulders.

(suddenly, the flames were just a bit quieter.) 

"You'll be fine," Brendan said softly. "I promise. We're alright."

Aidan slept. 

(for the first time in ages, there were no dreams.)


	5. Chapter 5

There was no denying that Aisling was terrified.

The mist inside the cave was different from hers in the forest, and even different from the fog on the sea. It wasn't supposed to be there. It was made to hide something, and she thought she knew what that something was.

A _Dark Old One_.

She and her people, the Tuatha Dé, were called Old Ones by the humans of Ireland. But they were not alone; there were others, even older and far more cruel.

The one she thought of was Crom Cruach, slayer of her people. Of her queen, her mother.

Was the two-headed thing the Dark Old One? She thought so at first, but it never tried to catch her like Crom and his tendrils of rotten dark.

Perhaps it was merely weak. Crom Cruach's power grew from the worship of fearful humans that wished to tame the land, but there seemed to be no humans near the misty, smokey island.

She did know one thing: she did not want to go into the sea again. There were no more trees to float on, and the thought of swimming made something in her chest go cold.

She didn't understand what she saw over the ocean. There were so many rocks sticking out of the mist that she hadn't seen drifting, it looked like a maze. Had the storm really moved her that far? How had she not crashed into the rocks? Was that a "miracle"? It should have been impossible.

The two-headed thing flew into the rocky mist and returned, covered in the scent of fish. Perhaps it wasn't an Old One at all. Or maybe it took sacrifices of fish?

She was still afraid, but it moved around more than the Dark One ever did. They would meet again some day, and she would rather it be on her own terms rather than being surprised on the shoreline again.

She did not like to kill with her own hands or claws or teeth, so she decided that catching a fish was a last resort. Instead, she went up to it one evening (she judged by the darkening grey) after it smelled particularly strongly of a meal.

She thought of her mother who sacrificed herself to save her, of Brendan who went into the dark to be a bringer of light, and of her own survival after Crom had tried to take her.

Aisling could do it. And if she could not...

...perhaps she would see Mother again.

Her eyes pricked with tears for a moment, which she swiftly wiped away.

She took a deep, deep breath and began to try and speak with it.

**/-/-/-/**

They smelled the human-thing long before it decided to show itself, but they were too full to move, or even for Gas-head to open her eyes. Spark-head opened only one to peer at it, but it stayed on a rock quite a ways from their ledge.

Night was approching. They would have to go in the cave soon...but they were so full and content. It could wait a while.

A thought unfurled in their minds like a new leaf.

Not their own thought; a memory of darkness and scales like theirs, only blue instead of green and yellow, and they glowed like a beacon from the deeps of the sea.

All four of their eyes flew open and focused upon the human-thing. It aimed its green eyes at the rock beneath its feet, unthreatening.

They settled down, though they did not look away.

The next thought an image of themselves, clearer than even the smoothest of seas had ever reflected them. And then the memory of the darkness again, along with a feeling they knew.

The Great One. Or at least _A_ Great One.

The human-thing looked up at that, and it made a sound like Gas-head when she smoked too much without a spark and her throat burned.

It could _hear_ them, they realized in surprise.

 _Yes_ , the thought came. _I can understand you_. It seemed nearly as surprised as they were.

What did little white human-thing want? they wondered, arching their necks.

_I want to know...if you are the kin of the Dark Old One. Of the Great One._

Gas-head hissed and Spark-head crackled. It--or she, they somehow knew now--was suddenly several rocks away.

Kin of the Great One? Hardly. Though it seemed dragon as much as they were, it was old. Forever-old, perhaps. Not even they were that.

There had only been one, and it had controlled the will of dragons since the beginning of time, they thought. It demanded sacrifices of whatever they could catch. And if they did not catch enough, it took the dragon that failed instead.

The little human-thing began to shiver all alone on her rock, and they came closer. The wind off the sea was cool; perhaps she didn't like it. They did, so they sat in front of her to block it and feel it themselves.

There was a thought of the blue-scaled light-dark thing again, all angles, wrapped around the swollen form of the Great One.

 _They must be kin. Or had been. Crom Cruach_ \--the word was spat like bad meat-- _is dead_.

The Great One had kin? Possible, though they had never seen anything like it. They felt the same, terrifying and ancient and like it should not be, at least not anymore.

And they were the same in another way. The Great One was dead, gone in explosion of ashes by its own gas and a spark lit by another. It did not have two heads, and so it didn't know how to burn the gas right.

They liked that they were better than the Great One had been.

 _Yes, you are_ , she assured them. They preened a little, then settled down again. They still had time before it got too cold.

Then, after several minutes, the little human-thing turned to them. _May I touch you?_

Spark-head and Gas-head looked at each other.

She was small, even for a human, and she held no metal for slicing. They didn't see why not.

The slim soft claws at the end of her front feet brushed gently over Speak-head's snout, and then over Gas-head's. Only for an instant, and they felt something inside them seem to tighten and burn, like fire, but gentle.

 _Thank you_ , she said.

The sun had almost fully set, so they heaved themselves back to their feet and went into the caves.

The little human-thing came with them. When they flew up to their ledge, she followed them by climbing up the rocks. They remembered she hadn't dared to go so far inside before.

They laid down. A few body-lengths away, the little human-thing did the same.

Strangely, they found that they didn't mind at all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> screw it, I've decided chapter length will have variation. I hope you can forgive me, this is my first real multi-chapter fic.

Brendan woke as something crashed.

He knew exactly where he was, which was unusual—on the ship, he woke wondering why his bed was rocking, and reality came crashing down around his head every time. He was in the house with the dragon. And—

 _(“Hiccup!”)_ the great Northman that carried them shouted from below. _(“Get your beast down here and help clear the snow!”)_

The older boy on the bed and the dragon beside him let out near-identical groans. Their silhouettes got up and began to stumble to the stairs while making reluctant-but-affirmative sounds. They seemed to have forgotten that Brendan and Aidan were even there.

Brendan was hungry, but he didn’t know if he should try to ask. If he even could.

He pressed his face deeper into the blankets and listened to the sound of Aidan’s breath. Maybe he could fall back to sleep.

Then he flinched at the sound of something like an explosion echoed from downstairs. Aidan could sleep through a lot, including that, but Brendan was wide awake. What _was_ that?

There was another, and a third. Then the voices of the Northman and the boy—should he call him a Northman too? He seemed much too kind for it—filtered through the floor, sounding a lot more calm than he would be with those sounds. The door opened, then shut, and there was silence.

_...Did they leave?_

After several minutes of quiet, he pushed himself to his knees, then his feet. He kept tight hold on his blanket to keep the heat in and began creeping across the floor.

His steps were wobbly, but he made it to the stairs. Peering down, he could see the fire and where they lay the day before, along with the chairs. The floor was wet and dirty in front of the door. No Northmen, no dragon. They were alone.

He nearly jumped out of his skin as something touched his shoulder--but it was only Pangur keeping him company. He breathed a relieved sigh as she nuzzled his face.

He'd just decided to start walking down the stairs to look for food when the door opened again, letting the big Northman carrying cloth inside. Brendan launched himself back up the steps, but not before the Viking's startled eyes caught his.

He heard some grumbling, but the Viking didn't try to follow.

After checking Aidan again--starting to move but not quite awake--he looked back down the stairs. The Viking was...cleaning the mess up inside the door, shoving the mix of water and dirt out into the enormous snowdrift he could see outside.

He watched the Viking move around a little more, but he couldn't do anything until the smaller one came back with the dragon. When the boy seemed to be coming up the stairs, Brendan scurried back to the corner where Aidan was finally opening his eyes.

 _("Ready for some breakfast?")_ Walking across the room, the young Viking broke a loaf of bread in half and handed the pieces to the two, and even pulled out a bit of meat for Pangur. He went back down and came up with a large tankard of something that smelled sweet and steamed. Brendan didn't recognize it until he took a sip--apple cider! That was a treat that he'd only had once or twice in the Abbey. He shared it with Aidan, and his mentor actually seemed a bit livelier after.

The boy started to talk again. _("I went to see Gothi, our Elder, and...there isn't much we can do for your friend here, at least not until spring. His spirit is wandering, she said, and spring usually helps heal that. She says he'll live, but she's too busy making cold remedies right now to come.")_ He sighed.

 _("Anyway, I'm Hiccup.")_ He pointed to himself. _("Hiccup,")_ he said again, then looked at Brendan hopefully.

Catching on quickly, Brendan said "... _Hiccup_ ," back, and was rewarded with a nod.

 _("Yes! I'm Hiccup.")_ He pointed at himself again, then at Brendan.

Asking his name was more than the Northmen on the ship had ever done. "Brendan," he said. He hesitated, then pointed at Aidan and said his name too, and Pangur Ban.

 _("Brendan, Aidan, and Pangur Ban. Alright.")_ Hiccup smiled at him, and Brendan found himself smiling back.

There was another crash, then the dragon barreled his way up the stairs. _("And this,")_ he laughed, _("is Toothless. Tooth-less.")_

He paused. _"Too...Toothless."_

The creature regarded him with intelligent green eyes at the sound of his name. In the dim light, they seemed to glow.

Brendan looked nervously at Hiccup.

Slowly, carefully, Hiccup reached for his hand. Brendan's eyes widened, but he didn't pull away. He heard Aidan breathe in sharply as the dragon—as _Toothless_ ambled closer.

Very gently, his hand was lifted, his fingers uncurled, his palm pushed forward.

Finally, Toothless pressed his snout into Brendan's hand.

It felt nearly smooth, but it also had tiny flaws--the scales, he thought. He felt the dragon's breath rush through the nostrils and into his sleeve, warm and curious. He felt his own pulse within his hand, as if the dragon's touch made it stronger.

Then Toothless drew back and it was over.

Brendan touched a dragon. A real dragon! He hadn't even been allowed to touch Aisling's wolves—he shut that thought down quickly.

They turned to Aidan after, and surprisingly, he didn't need much coaxing to do the same—though he drew back first at Toothless' touch instead of the other way around. Even Pangur deigned to press her own snout against the dragon's for a heartbeat before retreating to Aidan's shoulder. Although maybe it didn’t matter since they seemed to already be friends since the night before.

For a few minutes there was silence, as if honoring the fact that such a magnificent creature let them touch him.

Then Toothless twitched his earfins and smiled, which Brendan suddenly realized looked ridiculous and couldn’t help letting out a tiny laugh.

They spent the next hour learning to say things like "bed" and "floor" and, most importantly, "food", or at least "fish", which was good enough for him. Hiccup left to get more food and let him have as much fish as he wanted, along with Aidan and Pangur, which was amazing, even if they couldn't eat that much. They even got another drink of hot cider when Hiccup didn't finish his.

Brendan looked carefully at Aidan. He had withdrawn into himself again, but he looked better than he had since the attack. How long ago had that been? Weeks ago, months ago? Kells and all that it had been felt like another lifetime.

It was gone, burned to nothing. The Book was gone, stolen and carried away on the other ship. He never got to ask Aidan where they were going to run _to_ , if he even knew himself.

Just as on the ship, there was still nothing they could do. 

_("Bonding over food always works, doesn't it, Toothless?")_ Hiccup spoke suddenly, distracting him.

Toothless warbled back, a positive, friendly sound.

Looking at the helmet-clad Viking and dragon, Brendan realized with a start that he felt…safe. This was still a good place, a warm haven in a cold Outside world.

 He could decide what to do later, if— _when_ Aidan got better.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't just stubbornness issues that kept seven generations of Vikings from abandoning Berk. Despite the fact that the food was generally tough and tasteless, it was still perfectly edible, and there was plenty of it around. The island had trees to keep their homes warm through the winter and build ships to trade, as well as to replace their oft-destroyed buildings.  
  
And of course, there were the dragons.  
  
People paid quite a bit for dragon bones, scales, claws, teeth--anything that was left behind after a dragon was slain. It was more valuable than gold in several places.  
  
So raiding was less of a priority than was simple defense--and at their most desperate when even trading wasn't enough, they would set sail to pillage other tribes, but only of oath-breakers and cowards who harmed their allies first. Hiccup couldn't even remember a time when that was necessary.  
  
And now, with defense less crucial than it ever had been, their travel and trade range grown exponentially, and countless scales and claws available with their peaceful partnership with the dragons, the concept of raiding was as far from the minds in Berk as ever before.  
  
So that was probably why Gobber looked surprised when Hiccup brought it up during their Dragon Book session that only he, Astrid, and Fishlegs bothered to show up to.  
  
It was a few days after the little bonding session over food and words in his room, and since then it had been bothering him quite a bit.  
  
"I--I know about the whole...burning everything to the ground and taking all their stuff part," he explained, "but why would they take people? Especially people like Brendan and Aidan?" He gestured with his hands how thin and small they were.  
  
"As thralls, I'm betting." Gobber looked a bit less surprised and more grim.  
  
"Thralls? Dad mentioned that word once, but I never really had time to ask what it means."  
  
"Servants. Or slaves, really. If they're as small as you say, probably for around the house."  
  
"Slaves?" Astrid looked as disturbed as Hiccup felt.  
  
"Our ancestors had a few, you know," Gobber said, looking over the old page for the Deadly Nadder.  
  
"No. No, I didn't know."  
  
"Well, they never really survived the first few attacks--"  
  
"Okay, nevermind, I don't--don't want to know," Hiccup interrupted, thinking of the tiny form of Aidan and how badly he'd have gone against--well, anything.  
  
"Well, it isn't like we're planning on getting them now," Fishlegs said, breaking the awkward silence.  
  
"Right."  
  
"...So! Anything new to put in the Dragon Book?"  
  
"Uh. Well, I do have some sketches of a Night Fury we might be able to use..."  
  
The conversation shifted, but Hiccup's mind wouldn't focus.  
  
"You're looking upset," Astrid commented after they left.  
  
"Yeah. I," he cleared his throat. "Kind of. Am."  
  
"Tell me about it?"  
  
"I just--I felt bad when it was Toothless, but at least he can understand me, and I can always make another tailfin--" Toothless huffed from the snowbank he was inexplicably pawing at "--but they're just trapped here, I can't understand them, and they can ask for food and that's about it. And they were going to be slaves, Astrid! I can't think of anything else. They're terrified of almost everything. They don't ever leave my room when Dad's there, and then Aidan doesn't even when he isn't."  
  
"So, what, you're going to keep them in your house forever?" Astrid asked, though not without looking sympathetic.  
  
"I don't...I know I can't, but--they trust me, and they trust Toothless, and that's it. I'm busy trying to make sure the dragon babies are doing alright--" which they almost always were, but go figure, the Vikings acted more like worried parents than the actual parents did "--and I can't exactly hand them off. So they just...stay in there by themselves most of the day."  
  
"You could bring them with you around the village," she said half-heartedly.  
  
Hiccup sighed. "I don't think they trust me that much."  
  
"We'll think of something."  
  
He smiled weakly. "Yeah."  
  
/-/-/-/  
  
"Hiccup?" Brendan asked tentatively.  
  
The young Northman usually talked to them during dinner, even though they understood next to nothing, but this night the house was shrouded in a strangely tense silence. Even Toothless chewing seemed quieter.  
  
They were in Hiccup's room, even though Hiccup's father--Stoick, Brendan had learned after a few tries after thinking it meant downstairs--was out. That was normal most nights.  
  
Hiccup jolted. _("Brendan? Uh...do you want more fish?")_  
  
Brendan shook his head, then changed his mind and pinched his fingers close together and saying "Aidan". He could use a little more.  
  
After handing Aidan the last piece, he said "Hiccup?" again, sounding a little more frustrated. He didn't know how to ask what was wrong.  
  
He seemed to get the picture, for his mouth quirked up a little. He sounded tired, though, when he started to talk. _("I'm fine. Just thinking about things.")_  
  
Brendan kept looking at him worriedly.  
  
_("Brendan...I'm sorry. I didn't do this, but I feel responsible anyway. Our people did this.")_ This time it was his turn to sound frustrated. _("I wish you could understand me, and I wish I could make this better. But I can't. Just...I'm sorry.")_  
  
Brendan didn't understand the words, but he understood the tone. He wished just as much that they could understand each other, not just for his but for Hiccup's sake.    
  
Toothless understood it too, far more than Brendan ever could, so he crooned and gave an affectionate bump.  
  
_("Astrid,")_ Hiccup said suddenly, giving him an expectant look. _("As-trid.")_  
  
Brendan looked at his hands, wondering what he meant, but he knew that look. "Astrid," he said.  
  
They did another back-and-fourth session with several other words, none of which seemed to be in the room. What was a "Gobber"? What were "Fishlegs"?  
  
_("I think you should meet some of my...my friends. They seem scary, but they're better than a bunch of the bigger ones, I guess. Except Gobber, but...nobody else sticks around for our Dragon Book sessions, so I guess we'll go tomorrow.")_  
  
Whatever Hiccup was saying, he sounded resolute. He looked at Brendan seriously and said one word he understood: "Bed".  
  
Brendan obediently curled up with Aidan and Pangur as usual, laying in the fur nest that was pulled a bit out of the corner and more towards Hiccup's bed.  
  
He fell asleep watching the young Viking stare at the ceiling past Aidan's head, wondering exactly what he was thinking about.  



	8. Chapter 8

Aisling wanted to go home.  
  
She told her friends about Ireland, showed them the beauty of leaves that went on beyond what the eye could catch, like the sea. She told them of the fierice but loyal wolves, the clever foxes, the darting fish in the streams. They especially liked that last one.  
  
They let her rest on their back when she told them, and didn't mind if she balanced on them when they flew for food. Being high in the air was nothing new, but the rush of flying still struck her, exhilarating and terrifying all at once.  
  
She asked them about flying home.  
  
They said no.  
  
No. They hadn't seen such land since the days of their youth, and then it had been so far that they could not fly there now, with their old wings. If that was even the place they had been.  
  
Quietly, she left the ledge and then started to run. She ran and ran until her legs began to burn as much as her eyes, which took quite a long time.  
  
Eventually she stopped and breathed and realized she was somewhere she hadn't been.  
  
To distract herself, Aisling explored the caves.  
  
The first thing she found were the dragons. There were only a few, all old, and they mostly ignored her since gaining the acceptance of her two-headed friends. The only that stood out was an ornery and scarred giant of orange-red that burned itself when she came too near, and a brown-grey one that looked like a boulder that slept soundly enough to not notice when she used him as a perch. He never flew and his thoughts were slow and calm, and she knew that one day soon he wouldn’t wake up at all.  
  
She found many other things. Old bones from meals cast about, mostly fish and a few things like deer. Streams of the earth’s red blood, so hot that even she could not go near them. Plenty of scales that matched the skies outside that she knew came from the Great Dark One. She didn't touch those, although the ones that were still red and green and orange and blue were hers for the taking, if she so wished. So she did.  
  
In a wide open cave near the shore, there were many pieces of wood brought in with the tides, though none as large as the tree she rode in on. She still collected them as treasures of the green world beyond, carrying them to the ledge she and her friends shared.  
  
Some had colors and were carved with people and dragons, though those were rare and always broken from something bigger. She never liked those, since the dragons usually had swords sticking through them. Aisling wondered if the wood came from the Vikings’ ships, and if the ones who stole her ever made it to their northern homes.  
  
She cracked those open and grew flowers from the rotting wood, although with the mist blocking out the sun, they never lived very long. But she didn't stop. They were as close to home as she could get.  
  
/-/-/-/  
  
Hiccup found some surprising willingness from Brendan, actually. After luring him downstairs with breakfast—there was a little pang of guilt, but it worked for Toothless, why wouldn’t it work with them?—he made his intentions clear by opening the door.  
  
The boy had kept back at first, eyes wary, but when nothing but cold air came in he crept forward again to look out. He could see the entire village from there, a handful of dragons and Vikings outside and preparing for the day, crisscrossed with paths that the dragons had finally helped with. Only a handful of people could be seen, since it was still pretty early, but that was the point.  
  
Brendan looked fascinated at the dragons. The closest was Astrid’s Stormfly and her trio of babies, who peered around from, beneath their mother’s protective wings. A very light snow was falling, and they occasionally darted out to snap larger flakes up before the others could.  
  
Hiccup offered Brendan one of his old cloaks to wear, which he slipped on gratefully, still watching the outside.  
  
He tried to get Aidan out next, and though he could get the cat to come at his call, the man refused to go down the stairs. Brendan called him (“Brother Aidan, look! There are baby dragons, and they look nice. Please come here and watch them with me.”)  
  
Aidan looked like he was struggling with himself. Whatever went through his head kept him rooted to the spot.  
  
Well, at least he’s out of the corner, Hiccup thought.  
  
He was at a loss on what to do. He didn’t want to leave Aidan alone, but he didn’t want to bring Brendan back upstairs and smother the spark of interest in his eyes, either.  
  
"Fish," he said, gesturing outside. There was some oatmeal left from Brendan on the table, but there really was more food in the Hall, where they were going to have their meeting over the Book of Dragons. Which reminded him that he had to go to his space in the back of the forge to get one of his Night Fury sketches on the way.  
  
Hunger seemed enough to spur the man downstairs, at least, and he ate the food quickly. He glanced around as if expecting someone to come in and knock it from his hands. He accepted an old cloak of Gobber's--at least, Hiccup thought it was Gobber's; it was too small for his father and definitely wasn't his, but he found it in their wardrobe and decided it was free game--with a look of mild suspicion.  
  
Toothless wandered outside and headed to the Hall himself. The great bowl that was usually used to feed the dragons was put away for the winter, so even the dragons' meals were taken from there.  
  
With a last look back, Hiccup began to follow.  
  
A few seconds later, he heard Brendan's hasty footsteps behind him--and then Aidan's after that. It seemed they didn't want to be left alone this time.  
  
They weaved a drunken path around Berk, avoiding where the biggest gatherings and dragons were. They were greeted by Stormfly and her children with chirrs. Although she was used to humans, Hiccup couldn't get Brendan to use the smoothing spikes trick, and so she herded them away quickly after.  
  
Before long they made it to the forge, and that's when they refused to follow. They eyed the axes and swords with genuine fear, so he rushed in and out quickly, arms weighed down with bundled papers.  
  
Brendan looked curious. "Dragon papers," he said. "Drawings of Toothless."  
  
("Toothless,") Brendan mimicked. Hiccup nodded.  
  
"Yup! And here he is now," he said, rounding his way towards the Hall. Toothless was indeed there, looking impatient in front of the doors. As soon as they came into view he shouldered open the door, leaving it wide for the three humans.  
  
"Alright, breakfast time." Once inside, he motioned to his usual table, going to where the stores were to pull out some better bread and dried fish, the latter mostly for Toothless. An odd breakfast, but it worked.  
  
Hiccup dropped the papers onto the table, smoothing out a few new diagrams of improved tail-leg mechanisms, and some older but still entirely accurate pictures of Night Furies. For study until the others got there.  
  
Brendan looked fascinated at the images in front of him. He carefully reached a hand out to pull one to him, looking relieved when Hiccup didn't stop him.  
  
The pair of outlanders stared at the images for a long time, occasionally switching to another. They had curious looks on their faces, as if they were happy and pained at the same time.  
  
 _("...This is some fine art.")_  
  
Brendan's head whipped up along with Hiccup's. Aidan had barely spoken since they first came, and this was the most Hiccup had heard him say at once.  
  
"Aidan?" he said quietly. But the man seemed too absorbed in the images to look up.  
  
 _("It is,")_ Brendan said cautiously.  
  
 _("Perhaps...I still have the Eye, you know. I saved it.")_  
  
 _("You did?")_ Brendan's eyes were wide.  
  
 _("Yes. Perhaps you can still create here. The Book--")_ He stopped.  
  
When it was apparent that he wasn't going to speak again, Brendan looked back at the pictures of Toothless with a new intensity.  
  
Hiccup wished he could understand what they had said--and he hoped this new focus was a good sign.  
  



	9. Chapter 9

 

Brendan tensed as the door opened again. At least the Vikings that came in left quickly with baskets of food instead of sticking around. They sometimes gave himself and Aidan curious looks and called a greeting to Hiccup, but otherwise they were left alone. He was glad.

The Hall was huge. It felt as big as a chapel, if not bigger. It was so strange and nearly scary, seeing how much these Northmen had done when most of Kells had been nothing but little huts.

After the latest intruding Viking left, footsteps echoing away, Brendan tried to refocus on the paper in his hands.

The drawings of Toothless were very, very good. Even though they were made with charcoal, his slightly mottled scales and affable expressions were caught perfectly.

...He hadn't known Hiccup was an artist.

It was strange, even after knowing he was a kind Northman, to think that they had anything like art. Even though he thought once, guiltily, that the ship he had been on was beautiful in a deadly way. But that was different.

_…Hiccup_ was different. He could have been any refugee from the Northmen, thin and afraid, if only he'd been born somewhere else. In Kells, he wouldn't have been noticed. In Berk, he stood out mostly because of that.

And yet he was greeted like someone else. The look in the eyes of the other Northmen as they looked at him and at Toothless was that of respect.

Brendan wondered why.

The door opened again to let in a Viking made of metal. At least at first glance it looked like that. At the second it was clear he wore a helmet, had a shiny silver hook on his arm, and a metal leg like Hiccup's.

That was another thing. He had been too preoccupied the first night, but the ones after made it clear that he was different in that way too. He didn't know how to ask, and wouldn't if he could anyway, but he wondered what in the world happened.

_("Gobber,")_ Hiccup called. _"(Good to see you--and Astrid, of course,")_ he added as a teenaged girl came in behind him.

That was what Gobber and Astrid meant? Those were names? Clearly they were, because they looked up at the sounds, and they replied with Hiccup's name.

_(“So, these are your little guests!”)_ Gobber boomed, gesturing at them with the hook.

Brendan leaned away, looking at Hiccup anxiously for an indication for what to do. Hiccup just waved a bit, looking back at him with an easy smile.

Brendan tried to relax. Hiccup wouldn’t let him get hurt. And he had to stay brave, for Aidan’s sake if nothing else.

Another wandered in, a large, rounded Viking with a smaller helmet. Brendan guessed he was Fishlegs, and was confirmed by Hiccup's next wave and call of greeting.

(" _Now_ _please, guys, I know I have them out, but--")_ a swift glance at Brendan and Aidan _("--they're a little skittish, so leave them alone.")_

With small noises of agreement, the small group clustered around Hiccup's side of the table and started to rifle through the papers.

Brendan and Aidan watched them quietly, and they learned.

They watched as Gobber pulled out a book--a _real_ book, bound in leather with the form of a dragon embossed in the front. They watched him gently tug a mostly-blank page out of the spine, and watched Hiccup scribble the writing it had down on an image of Toothless on the side without the false tailfin, and with Hiccup standing in front, carefuly holding out his hand.

They watched Astrid gently lean against Hiccup and watched their fingers weave together, and Hiccup's face flush. They watched Gobber take charge with grand gestures, pointing at the pages and presumably going over what they said, with Hiccup occasionally writing something down. They watched Fishlegs talk so quickly and excitedly he seemed to stumble over his words.

They watched how they each shot glances at the monks on the other side of the table. Fishlegs was only for a trembling second, nervously looking away as soon as he noticed. Astrid was bold, looking directly at them when they caught her eye, but never for long enough to make them uncomfortable. Gobber looked and talked to them as if they were a part of what he spoke of, although the only word they caught was "dragon". And Hiccup kept looking at them in concern, clearly wondering if it was all too frightening.

It wasn't for Brendan. Aidan was pressed against his side, but he seemed more interested than fearful.

Brendan was reminded of Kells, on days when a manuscript was coming along well and the Scriptorium was filled with the Brothers working together.

He felt tears spring to his eyes, and he wasn't expecting them at all. He tried to wipe them away, but more poured down his cheeks.

"Brendan?" Aidan whispered, and that was enough to get even more going.

"I-I don't know what's wrong," he gasped, even though he did. He felt like there was a circle-shaped hole in his chest where his Brothers and Cellach and Kells and Aisling and the forest should have been, and seeing Hiccup and his friends made it ache. And there was some happiness too, because Aidan was--not better, but he was talking, and that was almost more than Brendan thought would ever happen.

_("Brendan?")_ Hiccup said, starting to rise. Brendan breathed in and tried to wave him back down. Hiccup rushed to Brendan's side anyway, hesitantly putting a hand on his shoulder.

_("Maybe we should go home,")_ he said, gently tugging on Brendan's shoulder.

Brendan shook his head. "No, I want to s-stay, keep going," he said and pointed at the pencil.

Instead of taking it, Hiccup looked up, flipped one of the diagrams over to a blank side, and handed Brendan the pencil.

Brendan froze.

_("What are you doing?")_ Gobber asked, sounding intrigued.

_("Hopefully, helping,")_ Hiccup replied. He pulled out another pencil, perhaps to continue or to try to communicate with Brendan, but he didn't get the chance.

The pencil moved in Brendan's hand as if it were alive, drawing tails and the sharp slope of backs, pointed teeth and claws. Dark tangles of vines grew from the edge of the page, and wild leaves sprouted along their sides. The middle seemed blank at first, just a shape surrounded by the shadowy creatures.

The Vikings went back to their business at first, but their voices faded away as he created what he first thought of. He scarcely noticed as they gathered around him and Aidan.

Until— _("Black wolves,")_ Astrid said, startling him from his trance. She traced their lines with a single nail, following how one seemed to bleed into another so it was both a half-dozen wolves and one great beast with half a dozen heads.

And then Hiccup brought his own hand forward and traced the final, white wolf in the negative space in the middle.

"Aisling," Brendan whispered.

_("...Aisling,")_ Hiccup said.

Eyes still wet, Brendan couldn't help but smile.

/-/-/-/

_"Aisling."_

Many miles across the sea, a pair of green eyes opened.

Aisling threw herself from the ledge, scrambled down to the bottom of the cave, and practically flew to the edge of the beach.

She had heard her name, clear as day. Clearer than any day on that island was. 

And she felt something bloom in her chest. Something that made her think of her forest. _Something that felt like home_.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Ehh, I don't think this chapter is much good, but hey, seat-of-pants writing generally isn't quality. Still fully prepared to incorporate suggestions~

They eventually remembered a forest that stayed a bit green for all the year with needle trees, and they told the little white human thing about it.

She didn't understand when they _kept_ telling her about it, about how it was a forest with its own good things, and many other dragons for her to meet close by besides.

Even one of their own brood lived near there, and dragons always respect their mothers, even if they didn't want the little white human there. Which was probably not going to be any problem, since they had their own Riders already. There were quite a few other humans on one side of the island.

At that, the little white human thing didn't seem to want to hear of it. _Humans hunt my animals,_ she said, _and tear through my forest. I never--I almost never want to meet them._

Which didn't make sense; wasn't she a human too?

 _No more than_ you _are a Dark One,_ she snapped back and vanished. When they headed out for a hunt, they saw her on the shore tossing stones and staring moodily into the water.

She asked about the forest the next day, though, and the one after that. She sounded sad and sick.

They told her about it easily, about the tree-covered hills and mist and hidden lakes and small valleys beneath the branches.

After the next storm, they told her, they _could_ fly there. Their wings weren't that bad.

_Where is it?_

To the southeast, they thought.

There was a very long period of quiet.

 _Yes,_ she finally said. _I'll go. Even with the humans._ Then: _I think there's something waiting for me there._

/-/-/-/

Hiccup didn't show up to the next Book of Dragons session, so Astrid volunteered to hike through the snowy village to get him. What she found in the house was unexpected.

The first floor was entirely empty, which was normal, but in Hiccup’s room…the owner of it was sprawled out over the bed, snoring slightly. Toothless, laying between the bed and the furs the outsiders (also asleep) were using for a bed, quietly chuffed a greeting before shutting his eyes. A good bit of the floor was covered in papers, and those papers were covered in drawings. It was too dim to see what they were, so instead she tiptoed between them to Hiccup.

Or she started to. A flicker of light reflecting from near Brendan’s hand made her turn and edge a bit closer. She bent down and picked the whatever-it-was up.

It was a crystal, perfectly round. Taking a closer look, she was startled to find that she could see the whorls in her skin on her fingers through it. And bending down again let her see the drawings closer and somehow better, as if it glowed from the inside.

She ended up kneeling instead of bending to see them better. They were just charcoal sketches, but it was like they were real; leaves with real veins, wolves with strands of fur, people with robes edged with beautifully patterned knots.

She didn't know how long she looked at them, but eventually she stilled, hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

Aidan was awake, purple eyes on the crystal in her hand. He looked terrified.

"I'm not going to steal it."

He flinched at the sound of her voice.

Astrid brought her hand out flat, the crystal laying on her palm. Struck with the thought of dragon taming, she made herself seem smaller and kept her eyes from staring directly into his. She lifted her other hand and made it flat as well, showing that she held nothing dangerous.

Very slowly, he extended his hand. His fingertips met her palm for a heartbeat, enough that she could feel they were cold. Then he was back into the furs, shifting back closer to the corner. A white cat suddenly came from around Brendan's still-sleeping form and began to nuzzle him.

She looked at him properly, and she realized he honestly looked pathetic, hair matted, dressed up in a too-big wool grey cloak and buried under furs, still shivering slightly with the chill.

Hiccup took them in simply because he was kind and they needed help to not die. They _really_ needed help to not die. It was like his story of how a downed dragon was a dead dragon, and he gave Toothless back the sky.

Astrid wasn't always the nicest, she knew, but she found herself understanding Hiccup's protectiveness. The cold, their size, their fear worked against them.

She thought of Brendan's sudden tears the session before. "It's alright," she found herself saying. Because it was, or it was going to be. They--and it was definitely _they_ now--had tamed dragons, they could fix whatever was wrong or die trying. Not that she thought they'd actually die, but that was how serious she was.

She carefully edged closer to him, stopping when he looked uncomfortable. She put her back against the wall several feet away from him and brushed her hair back from in front of her eye. "I'll keep watch," she said quietly. "Sleep." Hiccup told her all the words that he was teaching them, and he knew at least the last one.

It felt like ages, but the old man settled down. The fearful gleam of his eyes vanished as they closed. His breath evened.

 _Finally_. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Astrid?" Hiccup's sleepy voice suddenly sounded. "'S that you?"

"Yes," she whispered back, "and _crap_. I think you missed the Dragon Book session. And so did I."

"Gah." Hiccup half sat up. "Sorry, Astrid. We were up late..." His hands gestured vaguely at the drawings littering the floor.

"Yeah, it's okay. I was just looking at them."

Hiccup hummed an affirmative, eyes slipping halfway shut. Astrid sighed and pushed herself up, then clambered over him to the other side of the bed.

She tugged half the blanket over herself, ignoring his exhausted stammering, and closed her eyes too. It was a cold morning, perfect for sleeping in.


	11. Chapter 11

They drifted through mountains, darted between threads, skirted puffy waves of white and grey. The rushing air from wind and beating wings blew Aisling's hair around her, and she laughed from her standing perch. The view from the tallest tree in the forest had been nothing like it. She did not feel her forest, but she could still tell there was more than just rock beneath the clouds.

They told her to hold on. She crouched on their broad back and wrapped a hand around a scaly back ridge.

They dove.

Aisling felt the inside of her chest go cold, but it was more fun than terrifying. She nearly asked them to rise up to do it again until she looked down.

She saw light. Pinpricks of it on the rocks far below, wavering in place. No wildfire could happen in such cold; those were the humans, she was sure.

They got closer, and the line of what almost looked like sheer stone revealed itself to her sharp eyes. Trees. _A forest_.

They banked and glided down to the ground along the edge. She leaped from their back and into a tree twenty feet before they hit the ground, her sharp fingers digging into the solid bark.

She tilted her head and listened to the soft pulse of sleeping life.

Real, it was real, _it was real_. She leaped from it to another, and another. All alive, all real.

Then she stopped and looked back.

Her two-headed friend hadn't flown away, but they were walking towards where the humans were. _Where are you going?_ she asked, sounding very nearly afraid.

The humans were friendly. They had food. Spark-head and Gas-head were going to get some.

_You aren't going to leave, are you?_

It was a good place, lots of fish, some of their old brood around. Of course they would stay.

 _Good_. She slid to the ground, stumbled on her slightly bad leg, and began to run on all fours.

Aisling had a lot of exploring to do.

/-/-/-/

In retrospect, it wasn't hard to figure out. Hiccup had rolled off the bed, landing on Toothless. Toothless was startled and tossed Hiccup off his back. Hiccup had landed on the floor next to Brendan.

At the time, all Brendan was aware of was a yell, a roar, and something crashing hard next to his head.

He yelped and sprang away from the sound, nearly tripping over Aidan, and was halfway across the room before he got his bearings back.

He turned back and saw Aidan against the wall with Pangur around his neck, hissing. And Hiccup's false leg was tangled in the blanket, which was also tangled on the ridges on the dragon's back. Hiccup himself lay on the floor, groaning. A girl--Brendan had forgotten her name at the moment--was sitting up on the bed, apparently too surprised at the sight in front of her to react beyond blinking.

"...Ow," Hiccup said. That could be understood in any language.

He lifted his arm; it was bleeding. Brendan was still filled with adrenaline, and he started to stumble forwards, intent on helping the young Viking up.

 _("For the love of Thor, Hiccup, how did you--")_ Astrid, that was her name. Her voice held worry and, of all things, amusement. She went around to Hiccup's other side, and Toothless nosed him from the back. Together, all three of them lifted his slightly-protesting form back onto the bed.

_("Well, that was a great start to the day.")_

_("Or whatever it is now,")_ Astrid said. She turned and started to untangle the leg from the blanket.

He watched in fascination as Hiccup started to pull his pants leg up. He hesitated, eyes sliding from Brendan to Aidan.

Then he shrugged a single shoulder and lifted it all the way.

There was metal inside the stump, somehow, and it was bound with bandages of wool. A peg and Astrid's movement showed where the leg popped in, and before long, Hiccup was standing on his own feet again.

"Hiccup?" Brendan said, pointing at the hurt arm. Hiccup shrugged it off.

 _("It's fine, kiddo. I've gotten worse before--see, it's barely even bleeding anymore,")_ he said, wiping the red off.

Aidan stepped forward and put his hand on his arm.

Everyone stopped.

Aidan looked nervous, but he didn't go back to the corner. He carefully applied pressure near the cut and didn't move until the bleeding had entirely stopped.

 _("...Thank you, Aidan,")_ Hiccup said. His voice was soft. 

Aidan just nodded and shifted back.

There was an awkward silence until Astrid turned and jogged down the stairs. They heard the door open, and she called up _("Hey, it's late, nearly sunset!")_

Hiccup's eyes widened. Then he looked at Brendan and Aidan and started to go to the stairs, gesturing for them to follow.

Toothless was down the stairs before Hiccup was, looking excited. Brendan and Aidan exchanged glances. Brendan was glad to see a look of cautious acceptance instead of a fearful stare back.

They followed.

Hiccup went around back and grabbed a great saddle and put it on Toothless. The metal foot of his leg hooked into it, and the red fin on the end of the dragon's tail fanned open wide--

\--and they were off the ground.

They stayed low enough for Brendan to nearly touch Toothless' clawed feet. He found himself chasing the airborne pair and laughing, feeling Aidan racing along behind him.

They barely noticed the huge amount of other dragons and Vikings until someone shouted _("Night Fury, get down!")_

Toothless swooped, gently (for a dragon) bouncing off their backs and shoulders. They all stumbled and laughed, and Brendan was too happy to be afraid. He kept running, jumping over a bit of wood in the was easily, trying to keep up.

They raced through all of the village, Toothless and Hiccup leading them down winding stone paths and onto a built wooden one. They landed for a moment where Brendan could reach, and took off over the edge.

Brendan looked.

The sea roared far below, and the sunset glittered beautifully against the waves. The rapidly shrinking form of Toothless formed a dark spot against the sun. Before long a beautiful blue one appeared above Brendan's head, and Astrid flew after Hiccup, laughing herself.

Aidan slid to a halt beside him, Pangur balanced on his shoulder. He looked over the sea.

He was smiling.

Together, they watched the dragons dance through the air until nightfall.


	12. Chapter 12

 

They still kept upstairs when his Dad came home each night, Brendan still stuck near him whenever they went to the Hall, and Aidan was still quietly frightened of everything bigger than Pangur--but things were better, enough that Hiccup could take them outside again in the next few days.

The wooden walk above the docks became a favorite place, for Aidan especially. He learned the word "ocean" before Brendan did, and that was one of the few words Hiccup could easily pry from him.

That was where they met Astrid the most.

She convinced Stormfly that the pair of outlanders were safe. They both copied Astrid's "make yourself small and nonthreatening" action, and she even managed to coax them to gently brush down the dragon's tail spikes. Her babies learned that Brendan was fun to chase around a little, and that spitting flames at humans is bad. Luckily, the worst thing that happened was a singed sleeve.

They dared to accompany him to Snotlout's place after an incident with some clippers, and they watched as he tended to a baby Nightmare with a special powder that stopped bleeding when the quick is hit.

Snotlout was surprisingly oblivious to Brendan and Aidan. Or maybe Hiccup should have expected it by then; he was one of the biggest worriers, even though he hid it under his tough-guy attitude and attempts to be suave. He was nearly in tears while Hiccup cleaned the bloody claw off and swore that he would be more careful the next time he tried to clip them. They left without any trouble.

Fishlegs and Meatlug were the easiest, even though they were quite wary of the latter at first. Fishlegs they knew from the Great Hall, and his constant chatter seemed to soothe rather than irritate them.

Meatlug was easy to get along with, fortunately. She was used to being climbed all over by the human and dragon children of Berk, and she let Aidan and Brendan pat her head with her seemingly endless reserve of patience.  
  
They trusted Hiccup enough to follow him into the forge, especially after realizing that was where he stored most of his pencils and paper. The blacksmith always greeted them with a friendly wave of whatever was in place of his hand that day.

Despite being the biggest of those they would meet for more than a few minutes at a time, they didn't seem to mind him. Possibly because the only times they saw him was when they were doing or about to do their favorite thing--drawing. And Gobber had his own fondness for Pangur Ban, when she accompanied them on their visits. She certainly cut down on the forge's mouse problem.

The Twins were usually too busy doing their own thing to meet Brendan and Aidan. 'Their own thing' generally meaning competing with each other, fighting with each other, or destroying things with each other. Generally with fire. But for once they were a bit more troubled, preoccupied with what their dragon was preoccupied with--a great green Zippleback that had shown up a few days before. Visiting dragons weren't uncommon, though fewer had appeared recently. Hiccup guessed it was because they had their own young to raise.

The Twins halfheartedly argued when they met near the walk, and nudged at Aidan when that seemed enough to frighten him. When Brendan darted between them at his defense, they tried to pick him up and pretended they were doing to toss him down into the water. At a snarl from Toothless they put him down and wandered off.

...Knowing them, Hiccup knew they'd been lucky. That didn't stop Brendan and Aidan from hiding between himself and Toothless.

"Let's go home," he said. It was nearly sunset, anyway.

/-/-/-/

Aisling ran through the trees, letting snowdrops bloom in wild trails every time she breathed out. Pine branches shook with her passing, chunks of snow falling behind her. The sun streamed through the trees around her and she twirled through it, letting white petals fly.

It wasn't her forest. Though it accepted her, she was not welcomed into it.

After her time on the island with the dragons, that was still more than enough.

It was definitely different. The entire place seemed darker, like the sun had to work harder to get through the trees--but she could at least see it now.

And there were dragons. She watched them from the edge of the forest when the humans--Northmen that smelled different from the ones that took her--were away.

There were two-headed ones like her friends, and boulder-looking ones, and the ones that could burn their bodies, and some that she hadn't seen that shined with brilliant color.

What caught her interest the most were the tiny ones. The baby dragons. More than she could count. They all usually had humans around them, so they were hard to watch for long. She liked watching them play with each other and their families.

Even if it made something inside her chest feel hollow.

She had a forest. It wasn't quite her home, but it was _a_ home. That should've been enough.

She still missed--

"Brendan," she murmured to herself, and darted from the edge of the town into the trees.

/-/-/-/

Brendan didn't hear her, as Aisling once had heard him, but he felt something.

The same feeling of miracle that had filled his chest with warmth the first time he'd seen Aisling grow flowers from the hard stone she sat upon.

He sat up with a gasp, looking around.

Everyone was asleep.

He grabbed an unlit candle from Hiccup's desk. Quiet as he could be, Brendan went down the stairs, only letting his feet move with each breathy snore from Stoick. He pressed the candle carefully into the fire and slipped out.

The cold bit into his face, but his chest still felt heated, like the sun was were his heart should be.

There was something out there. Something very, very important.

Ignoring the big snowflakes that fell down around him, he began to walk into the imposing darkness of the forest of Berk.


	13. Chapter 13

It was a bit too early in the season for their growth, and the snow should have covered them, but only a few steps into the trees and Brendan could see dozens of little white flowers poking out of the dirt.

The forest was dark, far darker the first time he ventured into the green around Kells, but the snowdrops were like little lights in the pitch-black night.

Being able to just walk into the forest felt strange. Berk had fences for their sheep, but there was nothing like a Wall to separate it from the outside.

The flakes were falling faster. The leafless branches above his head wove black patterns against dark purple clouds, and was so quiet his every crunch of snow underfoot seemed to echo.

He shivered. Maybe going out hadn't been such a good idea...

The warmth in his chest disagreed, as did a sudden tingling where the drawing of the Eye had been on his hand those many months ago.

This forest wasn't the one he knew, but it would bring him no harm. He didn't know how he knew, but he decided to trust it anyway.

The number of snowdrops only increased, and he didn't dare hope what they meant. Deeper and deeper he went on, stumbling down slopes, bending to avoid getting tangled in low-lying branches.

He froze as a dragon flew by not far overhead, heading back towards where he came.

A breeze rushed by and blew his tiny candle out.

He sucked in a breath, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sudden black. Abruptly he became aware of how far he'd wandered from the safety of Hiccup's home--

\--there were eyes looking back at him.

A rush of wind rattled pine needles above. "Hello?" he said tentatively, averting his eyes just in case it was a dragon. He'd learned enough to know that eye-contact at first was bad.

_Brendan?_

The thicket of branches seemed to part, and the warmth in his chest grew. Brendan stared at the white figure in disbelief.

 _"Brendan!"_ Aisling was right in front of him, flinging her arms around him.

After a stunned few seconds he wrapped his own around her in return, and he was smiling and crying at the same time. "Aisling--you're alive--you--how are you here?"

Instead of answering, she pressed her ear to his chest. "This feels warm. Warmer than the rest of you. Like the treetops in summer," she said matter-of-factly.

He smiled harder and lifted her a bit. She looked surprised, and when she was back on her feet she grabbed and lifted him up even higher, spinning them both through the dancing snowflakes while her hair flew out behind her.

They laughed until they couldn't breathe because they were _together again._ Together when they thought it would never happen, together when they thought their last glimpses of each other being pulled into the darkness was all they would ever have.

When she set him down, when they could make words again, Brendan repeated "How are you here?" more seriously, because he knew how important her forest was to her.

She was halfway up a tree to his left, smile snapping into a frown. "The Northmen took me, but I escaped. They were too slow to catch me again." _Still the fastest._ "What about you? Did those Northmen with the dragons take you?"

"No! No. The ones that attacked Kells took me and Brother Aidan." He unconciously rubbed his wrists where ropes had been. "But a storm came and killed them. Almost drowned us, too, but by some miracle we hit an island."

Aisling gave him a strange look at the word _miracle_ and nodded. "A storm took me too, and put me on an island of dragons." She went on to tell him about her two-headed dragon friend and their flight to the island for the forest.

Sitting on a nearby log, Brendan told her about Hiccup and Toothless, of their strange kindness. Of Astrid and Stormfly and the rest, and of their odd friendships.

Hanging upside-down from an evergreen branch, Aisling listened with more interest than she'd ever shown when he told her about his Brothers in Kells.

All the while, the odd heat in his chest kept him warm, like he was sitting in front of a fire. It was like the treetops in summer, the new leaves after winter, the opening blossoms in the sunlight. It was strongest when Aisling was near him.

He'd forgotten some details of her, how she could scramble up the side of a tree like a squirrel, how she could leap from branch to branch like she had wings, how she could vanish and reappear in the blink of an eye.

He wiped at the cold trailing down his face. _I missed you._

She twisted on the bough she was balanced on and landed in front of him. She grabbed his arm and tugged.

_Come on!_

Quietly, he followed.

They wandered through the sleeping trees, leaving trails of footprints that vanished quickly in the falling snow.

They looked at the stark beauty of bare branches. They peered into hollows where foxes lived, though Brendan noticed Aisling didn't call them out, as she had done in her own forest. They climbed on fallen logs over steams frozen into silence, and knocked snow from evergreen branches with easy touches.

It felt almost like home.

But it wasn't, Brendan remembered when the sky began to lighten. "I need to get back before Hiccup finds out I left," he said mournfully. He didn't know what would happen if Hiccup did--surely nothing as severe as what Uncle would have done, but he felt it would be better if he didn't know.

Aisling nodded. "You'd better come back soon."

"I will--and I'll bring Pangur, too!"

All too soon they found themselves on the border between the forest and the village.

For a few moments, Brendan hesitated. "Do you want to come in with me?"

Aisling hadn't even considered going behind the walls of Kells, but she looked over the village with eyes narrowed in thought.  
"No," she said finally. "The forest is where I want to be."

It wasn't until he managed to go back up the stairs (Stoick was gone) and sneak past Hiccup's bed--though the Night Fury lifted his head and gave him a look of suspicion--that Brendan realized for the first time she sounded unsure. No...

Not unsure.

Lonely.


	14. Chapter 14

Aidan woke to Hiccup whispering his name.

Brendan was huddled against his side, deep asleep. Hiccup gestured to keep quiet.

It was late enough in the morning that Stoick was out, as was Toothless. When Hiccup gently tugged on the cloak he wore to come downstairs, it was only with a small spike of nervousness that Aidan followed.

Hiccup sat down in front of the hearth, holding a small bowl of oatmeal.

Hesitating slightly, Aidan glanced around. Everything seemed almost normal. Except for leaving Brendan.

He sat down, angling himself toward the young Northman. Hiccup nodded and handed the bowl to him.

He ate it quickly, but not enough to nearly choke. It was out of the sense that Hiccup wanted something and less out of sheer fear this time.

Aidan was getting better. The smell of smoke and the glimmer of fire didn't always send him reeling back into his own mind and memories, and he was well enough that the sight of their hosts, even if they were Northmen, did nothing more than make his stomach clench. It wasn't perfect, but it was progress.

He was aware of that, and aware of how he had been in the time between Kells and Berk. He was horrifically guilty as well. He'd left Brendan to take care of him and to deal with the terror alone. His fault.

He shook himself out of his thoughts and looked to Hiccup expectantly. Only a second later, there was a loud knock on the door.

Aidan tensed.

Stoick came inside.

All thoughts of progress lost, he wanted to bolt, but Hiccup gently put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring look.

A woman came in behind Stoick. The great Northman gestured to her with one massive hand.

_("This is Gothi, the Elder of Berk. She's come to speak with you, Aidan.")_

At the sound of his own name, he stood and took a few shaky steps back. He distantly was aware that he wasn't yet lost inside his memories, but he was still afraid. His eyes began to blur.

 _("Dad, dad, we--we should go. I'm sure they'll be fine together,")_ Hiccup said, standing.

Stoick looked to the woman. She nodded.

Wordlessly, and far more quietly than such a great man should have been able to, he left. Hiccup followed, giving Aidan one more reassuring glance before closing the door behind him.

The woman was shorter than even he, but she had a gleam in her eye. He knew she was as dangerous as any Northman. She had to be.

She slowly sat down by the hearth where Hiccup had been. Aidan remained standing and watched her reach her thin old hands out to the fire.

It was several minutes before she spoke.

"Hiccup has been treating you well."

The words were heavily accented, but he understood them. He hadn't heard that language since Iona.

He took in a sharp breath.

"Hospitality is something we Vikings are known for, believe it or not," she continued when he didn't answer. She patted the seat beside her. "Our village is not one of pillaging. You would have heard of Northmen upon dragons before this, correct? Sit."

He sat slowly, feeling his back protest at such movement. Sleeping on the floor for months had done him no favors.

"We...have been doing well here," he replied quietly.

"That is good," she said, nodding. "I must ask you now, where do you come from? I know our dragon trainer found you near the wreckage of a Viking ship. Do you know who took you?" As she spoke, her eyes never left the flames.

Aidan hunched over. "I don't know, I'm afraid. Their language wasn't like the one spoken here. It was...rougher. Different. I couldn't speak it to save my life." He shivered, even though he was quite warm. "Why do you wish to know?"

"They might try to attack us. Hopefully they aren't foolish enough to, now, but..." She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Fools always exist. They might do some harm. Not too much, we can stop them with our partners." For a moment Aidan was lost, then he realized--the dragons.

He had seen the girl and her dragon--Astrid and Stormfly--fly and burst out flames in the sky more than once. They could reduce a ship to cinders.

"There were only two."

"Hn?"

"The ships that raided Kells. And Iona. Where we're from. There were only two." He explained how they had only seen that many when they were taken, and how he had only seen two back when Iona was burnt to the ground.

Gothi turned toward him and listened intently. "They would not bring so few for an attack on another tribe."

"I agree. And there is only one, now. The other was lost, the one we were on. It was a miracle we survived. The Northmen that were on the ship didn't." Aidan and Brendan were fortunate enough that the cargo had cushioned them slightly, just enough to keep them from crashing headfirst onto the stony beach.

She abruptly brought her hands to Aidan's hair and began to tug on the locks.

"What--?"

"I have learned all I need to know. I do not have to go to my home yet." She fell silent and began to untangle the knots within his hair.

It was painful, but the state of his hair was truly horrendous. She pulled a comb from somewhere and began to rake through the strands.

Brendan staggered down the stairs halfway through it. "Brother Aidan?" he said, looking sleepy and confused.

Aidan replied, "I think...I've made myself a friend."

He looked relieved.

"Our people wouldn't have let you live so peacfully here if not for Hiccup," Gothi said eventually. "Our partnership with the dragons changed us all. We are still a firece tribe, but peacefulness helps us. You would not have liked to have met us before."  
  
She went on to tell the tale of the War of Dragons and Vikings, pausing and letting him describe it to Brendan as well. She told them of Hiccup the Useless bringing down and taming the most terrifying dragon they knew of, a Night Fury. She told them of the Island of Dragons. (Brendan looked especially interested in that.) And she told them how Hiccup and Toothless brought down the Death that lived inside the island, that had enslaved the rest of the dragons to do its bidding.

Gothi fell silent, and her hands began to twist the freed locks into a braid. She put the comb away and tied the hair off.

"I am to leave now," she said. "I have many things to work on. But I shall visit you, Aidan, or you could come visit me. It is nice to speak with someone of similar age."

With that, she gracefully left the house.

**/-/-/-/**

They liked Berk. They liked all the food it had. They liked having some of their brood near them, and that the humans that rode their young ones played with them, even if they didn't understand, not like their white not-human did.

They visited her fairly often, every few nights. They decided she was their rider, since every other dragon that lived on the island had one, or would have one. Some of the babies chattered about which would be theirs when they grew up, especially the ones that looked as boulders.

 _I am?_ She seemed surprised.

Of course she was. She was their favorite, even though they didn't get fish from her. Spark-head liked that she understood their thoughts, and Gas-head liked getting pets from her.

She made a strange sound. She called it laughter.

Did she want to fly? They hadn't in a few days, except to fly to her. They would go high again tonight.

_Yes!_

She jumped onto their back and held on, and they were off to touch the clouds.


End file.
